Monday, February 02, 2015

Ducey Prioritizes Prisons Over Education

: the condition of
being more important than something or someone else and therefore coming or
being dealt with first

Those in state government say a lot about priorities. “Project
ABC is a priority.” “This issue is a top priority.” “Our number one priority
for this session is XYZ.”

But the way to truly see the priorities of our state leaders
is to look at the budget. This document, with pages and lists of agencies and
numbers, shows exactly where the leaders who craft the budget are willing to
spend and where they are willing to cut. And next year’s proposed budget
reveals a lot about the new governor’s priorities.

Next year, again, more money will be spent on private prisons.

And next year, again, less money will be spent on education.

It’s pretty simple to see which of those continues to be the
priority for Republican leaders who control state government. In fact, it
couldn't be

much clearer.

In a stark demonstration of this contrast in priorities, this
week both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees will hear presentations from two state agencies –
the Department of Education and the Department of Corrections. One has seen
funding for its constituents slashed year after year, the other has seen its
funding steadily increase.

Let’s take a look at that funding.

Governor Ducey’s proposed budget calls for a $75 million cut
to our state universities, a 50% reduction in funding for our largest community
colleges and $13.5 million less to our district schools. Prisons, in contrast, see
an increase of $52 million, including money to build more private prisons that
will cost $100 million over three years.

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics,
violent crime in Arizona has dropped by 40 percent since 1995 and property
crime has dropped by 53 percent. But between 2000 and 2008 Arizona’s prison
growth rate exceeded that of every other western state.

The
growth in prison population has come at a substantial cost. The Legislature has
appropriated nearly $949 million in State General Fund monies to the Department
of Corrections for fiscal year 2011. This represents 11.2 percent of the State
General Fund budget and trails only K-12 education and healthcare
appropriations.

Those who support giving taxpayer dollars to for-profit
private prison corporations will readily claim it saves the state money. That same
2010 report, however, explains the fallacy of this myth:

According
to a 2009 department report, the State paid more per inmate in private prisons
than for equivalent services in state facilities. After adjusting costs to make
the expenditures comparable, the State paid private prisons $55.89 for each
medium-custody inmate per day compared to a daily cost of $48.13 per
medium-custody inmate in state facilities. The State also paid private prisons
slightly more for each minimum-custody prisoner.

Right now, our state has more people incarcerated than it
has students at the University of Arizona.

It is certainly possible
to begin reversing those cuts and lower tuition. That is, if higher education
were a priority of those who control the budget.

Another demonstration of this state’s misguided priorities
is the lawsuit by legislative leaders to avoid funding K-12 education as
mandated by the people of Arizona. That’s on top of the almost $4 billion in
cumulative cuts to our schools since 2008.

In 2000, the people of Arizona approved a ballot initiative that
required the Legislature to adjust base funding for K-12 schools to avoid
inflationary decreases. But beginning in 2011, the Legislature ignored the will
of the voters and the rule of law by not including inflation funding in the
budget.

In September of last year the Arizona Supreme Court agreed
with a lower court that ruled the Legislature must pay the funding, yet
Republicans are still fighting the ruling and some even say they are willing to
throw the state into a constitutional stand-off with the courts.

All of this time and money spent to avoid putting money in
our kids’ classrooms. That’s their priority.

Handing even more hard-earned taxpayer dollars to private prisons.
That’s their priority.

But that’s not the priority of those who wrote in our
state’s constitution that the Legislature, “shall
provide for the establishment and maintenance of a general and uniform public
school system,” though wrote nothing about providing for the profits of
private prisons.

And that’s not the priority of Arizona families who would
rather their children have a better chance to succeed through education and
hard work than to wind up in prison.

1 comment:

Dear House Democrats,If you are unable to stop or slow down the unnecessary expansion of public and private prisons this year, please at least legislate to explicitly grant public access to the records of the private prison corporations operating in Arizona. For examples of explicit access to private prison information, look to Florida's Sunshine Law, Connecticut's Freedom of Information Act, and Tennessee's Open Records Act.